I think I can reconcile your experiences with Taleb’s (and expand out the theory that tailcalled put forth). The crux of the extension is that relationships are two-way streets and almost everyone wants to spend time with people who are better than them in the domain of interest.
The consequence of this is that most people are equally constrained by who they want in their social circle and also the who wants them in their social circle. While most people would like to hang out with the super smart or super domain-competent (which would induce the negative correlation), those people are busy because everyone wants to hang out with them, and so they hang out with their neighbor instead. Since Taleb is extraordinary, almost everyone wants to hang out with him, so the distribution of people he hangs out with is equal to his preference criteria. For most people near the center of the cluster, the bidirectionality of relationships leads them to social circles that are, well, circle shaped. Taleb, in a fashion true to himself, is dealing with the tail end of a multivariate distribution.
Since normal people are dealing with social Circles instead of social Tails, they do not experience the negative correlation that Taleb does.
I think I can reconcile your experiences with Taleb’s (and expand out the theory that tailcalled put forth). The crux of the extension is that relationships are two-way streets and almost everyone wants to spend time with people who are better than them in the domain of interest.
The consequence of this is that most people are equally constrained by who they want in their social circle and also the who wants them in their social circle. While most people would like to hang out with the super smart or super domain-competent (which would induce the negative correlation), those people are busy because everyone wants to hang out with them, and so they hang out with their neighbor instead. Since Taleb is extraordinary, almost everyone wants to hang out with him, so the distribution of people he hangs out with is equal to his preference criteria. For most people near the center of the cluster, the bidirectionality of relationships leads them to social circles that are, well, circle shaped. Taleb, in a fashion true to himself, is dealing with the tail end of a multivariate distribution.
Since normal people are dealing with social Circles instead of social Tails, they do not experience the negative correlation that Taleb does.